It has now been almost six months since my wife of 48 years died of a brain tumor. The first four months were total hell for me because not only was her passing in my mind 100% of the time, but it continued to present what felt like rolling waves of grief that would take over my body, constricting my chest and throat, making my mouth feel sour and forcing torrents of tears at totally unexpected times. Not only that, but I was unable to focus on much of anything, feeling like I was just drifting in space without direction or even the desire for one. Perhaps the term “spacey” fits this period of time.

About two months ago I started noticing that the rolling waves of uncontrollable grief were starting to subside, getting further between and not quite so overwhelming when they came. I started getting a little interest back into my life, thinking about the future, wondering where I am now headed as a “new” me, and thinking about what (if anything) I “should” be doing with my life. I was slowly slipping back into a feeling of “normal” – as normal as I could without my long term lover and friend to help guide me.

Lately I have become fairly “clear headed”, seldom crashing into the waves of grief, and almost feeling normal – except for the continual physical feeling of heart break in my chest and body- My mind seems to be recovering faster than my body, it just does not feel good, or healed, yet. However, I have started to feel confident enough in my stability to start doing some things intended for the future. For months is felt like I had no future, and I just didn’t care about that. My life and future had no meaning or importance to me. Lately that has started to change, in fact I was almost thinking that I was past the worst of it.

I thought that until I encountered a lady friend of the family at the hardware store the other day. This friend took care of my wife’s mother for the last couple of years of toward the end of my wife’s mother’s life and therefore was known to me, but more like an acquaintance than a good friend, friendly but not really a friend. In fact, we have had zero encounters at a personal level. After my wife’s mother died, this friend got a job working as a clerk at one of the local hardware stores, so I saw her periodically and exchanged pleasantries while transacting business.

Last Thursday I went to the hardware store to purchase a small box of screws, expecting a normal brief exchange along the lines of “hi, how are you?” As I was leaving she said, “Tell Mary Jo (my wife) hi.” That stopped me in my tracks, I had assumed that she was aware that my wife had died. So I turned to her, saying “You must not know that she died.” That stopped the world! The shock exploded in her face, obviously this was a BIG crash to her. As first I was surprised, I hadn’t thought that there were any “personal” feelings between them – but that was obviously not true. There were clearly a LOT of personal feelings, they had just been hidden by social conventions. At that moment of seeing her shock instant deep grief hit me like a tornado. I felt like somehow I had exploded, and not in a good way. Tears flooded from both of our eyes, neither of us could talk, she came from behind the counter and hugged me. We just stood and hugged a deep, slow, hug of humanity – not being able to do anything but hold on, slowly swaying back and forth, while sobs and tears reigned supreme. I was vaguely aware that we were standing in the middle of the checkout isle in the middle of a hardware store, with people waiting behind us in line – but I didn’t care and apparently she didn’t either. Something much more important was happening.

This didn’t last long, we both quickly separated and I staggered out of the store, unable to say anything or think straight. Once I got back to my car I had to sit for several minutes waiting for my composure to return so that I could once again drive, or even remember that I was doing something.

So… obviously there are still HUGE emotions lying just under the surface of my grief. This must be the constant feeling of discomfort I feel in my body, my chest and my mind. It reminds me a bit of our planet earth – cool and pleasant on the outside, but just an onion skin below the surface is a seething ball of molten lava and iron. Now and then a volcano bursts through to remind us that we are living on a ball of fire – my life feels a bit like that, and it broke through the other day.

I consider this to be a good thing – I was being surprised that I could “heal” so quickly, obviously I haven’t. That is a relief. I have just found ways to get along with my life, but the pain and energy are all still right there. I feel it constantly, but usually not quite so violently. I use my memories and that energy to help me find direction and meaning in my new, very much lonelier, life.

This morning I finished reading Trees in Trouble by Daniel Mathews. This is another book concerning the causes of the serious degradation of the forests in the western United States, discussing how we managed to go wrong with our forest management practices as well as offering suggestions about how to improve them before vast areas of the forests are lost to grasslands. I discussed another book on this topic (Smoke Screen by Dr. Chad Hansen) in a blog that I titled “California Forest Management.” These two books presented positions that while generally in agreement about the “big picture” seem to take very divergent views on how to solve (or at least improve) the situation. I appreciate both of their efforts in bringing the discussion to the forefront, but wish they could get together toward a more consistent solution.

The broad view is that the forests (particularly the large evergreen forests (mostly the pine, fir and Douglas fir forests) are in serious danger from beetle infestations and forest fires. They are also in general agreement that much of the problem came about because of long term fire suppression efforts in combination with environmental changes from global warming. Both take the position that our most effective tool for solving this problem is fire. In our “smoky the bear” efforts to save the forests we managed instead put them at serious risk. Forests in these areas have evolved to withstand, and depend upon, frequent fires with started intentionally by man, as has been the case for thousands or years, or natural causes such as lightning.

In “Trees in Trouble” Mathews makes the point that we need to manage the forests to reduce fuel loads caused by too much flammable understory brush and too high a density of young flammable trees. He recommends mechanical thinning in conjunction to frequent controlled burning – both reasonable sounding solutions needed to get back to sustainable forest practices. However, his story also includes many recommendations concerning replanting of burned out areas, with very little consideration toward restoring, or maintaining, the entire forest ecosystem. His book reads like a prescription for the lumber industry to increase their practices of planting single species plantations in the hopes of achieving forest health paid for through logging profits. I don’t believe that is his intended position, but it is what I got from the book.

Part of “the problem” that I had with Mathews’ book has to do with blatant errors in the science of his thesis. For example, in the chapter called “The Bleeding Edge” he discusses how water is transported from the roots of a tree to the leaves where it is needed for photosynthesis. He describes this process thusly; “The force that draws water up into the leaves for photosynthesis is suction, starting with evaporation from the leaf pores, each of which is at the top of one of the vessels running all the way to the roots. ‘Where water transpires out, it pulls one molecule out of the leaf surface, which pulls the next one in line, all the way down to the rootlets, that have to pull it from the soil.'” This explanation is obviously wrong because, as every farmer knows, it is impossible to pull water up a pipe more than about 32 feet. If you want deeper wells than that, you have to put the pump at the bottom and push the water up the pipe. I am not positive about the details of how water moves from the roots of a tall tree to the leaves, but I am POSITIVE that it is not “sucked up.” (Actually, it isn’t even sucked up in the case of a short straw – it is pushed up by the weight of the air column above the water. As a good friend of mine used to say, “nature doesn’t suck” – it pushes. Low pressures don’t pull things to them, high pressures push toward the low pressure.) While this error in understanding basic physics might seem small enough to overlook, it raises a red flag for me that the author’s basic understanding of the supporting science for his discussion is less than stellar –

Mathews repeats his mantra of “thin and burn” throughout the book, with a good dollop of “plant new trees” to fill in the gaps. He generally fails to discuss the need for achieving a balanced ecosystem, in fact almost never including anything but trees (and beetles) in his discussions. To me, this means “forest health” is the same as “forest logging” – the goal is to create sustainable forests to support the timber industry, not so much to support a healthy, sustainable ecosystem. This leaves the discussion very thin, and frankly scary. He finally gets around to the point that I think is of paramount importance in the fourth from the last paragraph of the last chapter titled “Afterword” by stating that; “In planting trees, aim to perpetuate an ecosystem, not a plantation.” However, even then he offers no advice or discussion about how to deal with the parts of an ecosystem that are not trees. Throughout the book it is as if the ground is a featureless and uninhabited area with trees. Any mention of brush is that it is dangerous because it can burn trees, any mention of insects is that they are dangerous because they can kill trees – birds get a bit of a better story because they can transport tree seeds into burned out areas.

While I appreciate that this book continues to open the discussion about our needing to rapidly change our forest management processes, I wish that a much broader view had been presented – one that considers forests as an ecological resource (in the broad sense), rather than merely as a means of wood production and carbon sequestration. I am pretty sure that Mr. Mathews would adamantly deny my characterization. While I think that his heart is in the right place, in my opinion his discussions leave out, or under state the importance of considering the entire picture – what is actually in the forests such as gullies, brush patches, meadows, creeks, fish, birds, insects, animals and all the rest. It is not just a bunch of evergreen trees.

There is currently a situation in California’s Central Valley where the farmers are hoping to convert their failed agricultural lands into vast solar farms. The farms are failing because there isn’t enough water supply in the State to support all of the farms. The causes of these failures are many fold, but in a very simplified view they farmers planted beyond the ability of the environment to provide a sustained supply of water. They used up the ancient aquifers because instead of planting what the environment can support in a “low water year” they instead planting for the high water years and used the water stored in non-refilling aquifers to supplement the sustainable supply. Thus they over-planted with respect to their water resources, ruining the fertility of vast stretches of land in the process.

Now that it has become obvious that they destroyed their land, used up the aquifers, and want (they say need, but I say want) more water than will ever be available they are turning instead to farming the sun. However, if they are going to use these failed farms for solar powered electrical generation facilities they will need a means to ship that power to the users. The land being considered for conversion to solar energy is far from the users. There are not nearly enough power lines to carry the electricity, therefore there is a big push to have many more large power lines installed across California. If this is anything like the past, the goal is to have the State subsidize the cost of installation of these lines, including implementing eminent domain policies because new power lines are so unpopular in the State. The solar farms, nor the utilities are likely to pick up the costs for these transmission facilities, they will either be included in the overall rates that users pay, or be subsidized by the State through higher taxes – actually both approaches will be used. It is a situation where the farmers want to sell a new product (electricity) but can’t because a lack of infrastructure. They are therefor asking the State to provide that needed infrastructure so they can sell their not yet produced product. It is similar to what they originally did with respect to the water that they use. They had lots of unused (and almost free) land that they wanted to produce crops on, but there wasn’t any water. So they convinced the State (and Federal government) to provide them water so they could turn their worthless land into incredible profits. That worked for a little while, but they got so greedy that they destroyed the value of that gift, so are now turning to another scheme to once again turn there worthless land into another profit center funded by government and rate payers.

This is the same old BS that always comes with the utilities and powerful corporations being in charge of “big planning” to protect their monopoly.  It is true, if the utilities are going to continue to maintain their monopoly with controlling the sources of power production, and if they intend to locate it hundreds of miles from where it is needed, and if they continue to follow the plan of make more power instead of investing in efficiency, and if they want to make sure the users keep having to pay as much as they can afford rather than what is should be – then it is true.

The thing is that the “old” model of providing power, using power and operating the grid is out of date and will no longer work.  We don’t need more of the same, we need an entirely new approach. Of course wherever we (society) changes to an entirely new approach the financial winners and loses change and that causes all sorts of uproar from those that will become the losers.  The way for this to work is for the potential losers to find ways to change horses so that they too continue to be winners – but corporate and government inertia is great.

A better, and more sustainable solution is for the users to vastly reduce their use through available and affordable improvements to efficiency, and providing the bulk of their energy needs with on-site (or near by) solar energy production. The savings for the efficiency improvements go directly to those investing in the improvements, the 50% (or more) energy loses attributable to electrical transmission through long power lines are avoided, the grid becomes much more resilient and dependable, and the price of electricity becomes truly insignificant in most instances (especially those ten million of houses that the farmers say their solar farms can supply). If we take those ten million houses off of the grid by the use of local solar production and there is no need to provide them with additional power. The amazing part about this is that we have all of the technology we need to do this, and it can be done at an upfront, installation cost that is less than not doing it. There are well known means of saving money in the beginning that will result in huge savings over time in the future. It isn’t a case of having to wait for the “payback time” in order to achieve a savings, there is no payback time because there is no initial cost (Sort of, there is obviously an initial cost but it is much less than doing it the way were are currently doing it. The savings is in NOT doing what is being done.)

As an aside, it should be understood that the regulated utilities are not allowed to make any profit from the sale of electricity. They are mandated to sell the electricity for exactly the amount that they pay for it. There profits come from all of the other changes on the electric bill – the cost of the “grid” related to building and maintaining the physical structure to move the power that they purchase elsewhere to the customer. Of course, most of the utilities have “sister” corporations that produce the power, which is allowed to make profits on the production of electricity. In the case of large solar farms located on all of those hundreds of thousands of acres of failed agricultural land in most cases the land owners will lease their land to the owners of the solar arrays, who then will sell power to the utilities, who will then transmit and distribute the power to their customers. Spanish companies are very big in owning the large scale solar production in the United States. I assume China and other countries will also find this a great investment opportunity.

For those who might not know, my wife of 50 years passed away rather unexpectedly last October. One night in July she started acting “odd,” odd enough that I had her helicoptered to the emergency room. It turned out to be a rapidly moving, inoperable form of brain cancer that took her life about three months later – just as they had predicted. Those three months were full of fear, rapidly declining capabilities, sorrow, and more joy than I would expect in a situation such as that.

I was (and still am) absolutely, totally crushed by her death and the lose of her companionship. It is obviously a truly “existential” experience for me. The “who” that I was was so totally wrapped up with who “we” were that that old “who” no longer exists – it died with her. Now I am searching for, or perhaps building, a new me. (I wonder what that will turn out to be.) This is turning out to be not such an easy thing to do.

(Sorry for the weird use of double words together in the sentence – it seemed right and gave me a bit of a chuckle.)

I have discussed all of this in previous posts, I don’t want to dwell on it, but just wanted to give a brief background to what is on my mind today for those that might have just stumbled upon my blog. For anyone that did that, “welcome” I hope you come back again.

I have been spending my days alternating between “home” and a rental of a small, rather quaint house in the town of Sonoma. At home I have all of the “normal” things to do. Things like pay bills, buy groceries, do the laundry, clean the swimming pool, and many other daily chores. When I am in Sonoma I have nothing whatsoever to do. I check my email, write a little bit once in away (such as this little blog), walk around town, either cook something simple or go to a restaurant (usually opting for the latter), sit on a park bench when it isn’t raining, and talk to people during happy hours at one or another of the local bars. I am also looking for a house to purchase so I can move closer to town instead of being miles out in the country by myself at home.

I have been really enjoying talking to people. For some reason it has become really easy to get into fascinating discussions with total strangers about all sorts of topics, many just fluff, but most seemingly about important topics in our respective lives. I tend to shy away from talking about my wife and all that because nobody wants to hear about such things, but I share as lot as do those that I am talking with. It is fun, but I am also noticing an odd behavior that I am doing.

I realize that I have become a bit like a hermit crab that likes to sit on the edge of it’s shell home, watching, moving around, wiggling it arms, dragging its shell around the beach – but instantly retreating back into the safety of its shell as soon as it is approached. I get out and about, watch what is happened in town, getting into interesting conversations and being oddly more “social” than my normal style – but if anyone actually approaches me I skuttle back into my shell – often literally going home early and going to bed to read one of the many books I have been reading lately – always non-fiction about technically related topics (mostly history and biographies) – almost never novels.

I think I have become so quick to withdraw that it is sometimes on the verge of insulting to those who reach out to touch me. For example, there is a nice lady that I met in one of my conversations at the local pub who has been asking me to do things with her – go see a movie, join her in her art class, attend a lecture – that sort of thing. She is obviously offering to become more of a friend than just an acquaintance. However, when she approaches I quickly retreat – often actually getting into my car and going “home” for a few days of solitude. I suspect that she finds my behavior a bit insulting, or at least confusing.

I bring up the example of this lady mainly because when I watch my reactions it is clearly something more than just not wanting to get “involved” – it is almost like touching a hot stove or stepping on a thorn, an reflexive reaction to avoid pain. I suppose that is to be expected (although I didn’t expect it) as a part of my grieving process leaving me with my wounds exposed. I have just barely gotten past the point of breaking down in sobbing tears and tight throat at the most unexpected times. I can generally get through the day in relative comfort and sometimes even a bit of joy – but I seem to not be ready to go out and face “the real world” – I am pretty happy to hunker down in my hole of reading books and periodically going out to observe the world – but not becoming open to close encounters of any kind.

I am writing this because I promised a few friends that I would report my experiences following the death of my wife, perhaps so that we can all come to understand a bit more about what to expect, and what happens to us when we lose our anchor to the world. Perhaps there is something about this which can be helpful for others, or perhaps it is just a chance for me to think about what it happening to me in a very selfish way – I hope it is useful to others as well as to me.

It is now about four months since my love of my life, my wife of 50 years, unexpectedly passed away from a brain cancer that roared out of nowhere. For most of these four months I can perhaps best describe my condition as being in shock, not knowing what to do, how to do it, or why. The question of “why” should I do anything is almost overwhelming. It turns out that we had grown so close over all those years that we were no longer separate individuals, we were “us” in very deep and important ways.

Now I find myself feeling much less “whole” that just 50%, it is much closer to 0% – I feel like I just don’t exist at all. There is nothing to strive for, nothing to care about, no purpose or goal worth pursuing. Not just “bla” but closer to empty.

However, I find that I am slowly getting past the recurring bouts of agonizing grief, having entire hours at a time without chocking up, crying, or just going into stunned silence. I am slowly starting to beginning to seriously ask the question of “what now?” I have been asking that since her death, but more as an agonizing cry with the answer being “nothing”. Now I am starting to wonder what I could, or should, but doing to get some sort of meaning back into my life. I am asking questions along the lines of “do I do things to please myself, or do I do things to help others, or is it best to try to please others?” Am I meditating every day with the goal of becoming personally “enlightened”, or would it be better to focus on the “enlightenment” of society? Should I be feather my own nest, or would it be better to attend to the feathers of others individually, or as a group?

During this time I rented a house in a nearby town so I could leave “our” home when it becomes overwhelming and go to a different environment. That has been helpful, but now I am finding myself wondering what sort of “forever home” I should be searching for. What are the things that I should be considering? Should I be worrying about a future of disabilities as an old man? If so, what would that look like? Is it even time to be considering a “final” home, and if not, how will I know when the time has come to make a choice?

I am still in mental limbo, I would describe it as “long covid brain fog” if I had covid, but so far I have skirted that. Thank goodness, I can’t image what it would be like to both of covid fog on top of the existential loss of my partner. I believe the term “existential” is correct in this situation, the “me” that existed as “we” no longer exists- all of a sudden the “me” that I recognized is gone. I need to find a new “me” and so far that has been slow in coming. I am at least starting to be curious about that that new “me” is going to be like. I was pretty familiar with the old one – but this is going to be something different. I have my fingers crossed in the hopes that I and my friends are happy with the new version.

I have been wondering about the “problem” of too much immigration from the southern countries (Mexico and a lot of others). My first instinct is that there isn’t actually a problem at all, we have a need for the kind of labor and skills that they are willing to provide, and the immigrants are willing to take amazing risks and hardships in order to do it. In addition to assisting to fill our need for “labor” many of the folks that are attempting to immigrate have amazing skills, knowledge, education and points of view that would be extremely valuable in many ways. They are NOT just nuisances, they represent valuable resources just like previous “waves” of immigrants from around the world. There presence enriches us in many ways. They don’t represent a cost to us, they represent valuable resources and the potential for good friends. They won’t be coming if there isn’t an economic, and safety, incentive to do so – it seems pretty obvious that we need each other, we need them and they need us.

But, beyond the question of whether the immigrants are doing good or harm, there is a humanitarian question of why are they coming. When I try to put myself in their shoes I find it almost unimaginable that I would be willing to put myself and my family through what they have to go through to get here unless there were some highly compelling reasons to do so. I can’t fathom what my life would have to be like to give up my home and community, spend all of my savings, expose my family to huge dangers and hardships, traveling for weeks (or months) in order to get to a place where I will be paid almost nothing and be constantly in fear of being found by the police and deported. Not to mention that they know they will be facing fear, hatred and harassment from the citizens of their new country (the USA).

Obviously things are horrible where they are coming from. That horror comes in many forms, starting with poverty, lack of opportunity, corrupt and dangerous authorities (including their police), and the dangers presented by the “drug lords” and drug cartels in whatever country they live in. These all add up to a do-or-die situation for those that finally attempt to enter the USA, with the risk of dying being very high no matter what they chose to do.

One of the reasons for this situation has to do with the presence of the drug lords and vast amounts of profits from the drug business. Without this contribution to their country’s problems the folks that are driven to immigrate would be poor, would have limited opportunities – but would be relatively safe from violence. This condition was their situation until perhaps the mid-1980’s when things really changed for the worse because of the ability for some very bad people to achieve vast wealth by supplying America’s apparently insatiable demand for drugs. This demand results in extremely dangerous and unstable conditions in the supplying countries.

Our out-of-control drug problems are fueling the dangers in “supplying” countries that are largely responsible for causing people to come to the much safer USA at almost any cost. (Even though they are far from being safe here.) This situation will never stop as long as the dangers of staying at their homes are much higher than the dangers associated with attempting to enter the USA illegally. The solution clearly is not tighter security or stronger fences, the solution is to find some way to prevent the reasons that people are leaving their home countries. A big part of that has to do with getting our drug problems under control. In addition, we could help reduce immigration pressures by assisting these countries be more financially secure for the residents. A third part of a solution would be to help these countries reduce the overall level of graft and corruption in their governments.

As long conditions exist that make it worthwhile to attempt to illegally enter the USA it will keep happening and we will remain powerless to stop it. First and foremost we have to find how to stop our fueling the terrible conditions in the immigrant’s home countries through the “market” created by our drug use. So far we have been spectacularly ineffective in doing so. Our efforts of enforcing drug laws in an attempt to stop drug use (the “war on drugs”) doesn’t, hasn’t and won’t work, it just pushes the drug market underground – driving up the profitability of the flow of cash and drugs to the “drug lords” and their co-conspirators (often government agencies and the police). While creating more, harsher, laws is traditionally the first approach that is thought of, it doesn’t work. We need a better solution, one that reduces the drug problem by reducing the conditions that result in people turning to drugs to solve, or hide from, their very real problems created by our dysfunctional society.

That brings us to the solution to the immigration “problem” being one based on our looking internally at ourselves. What is it about our society that is causing us to have such an out of control drug problem? Why are people compelled to use so many drugs? I am convinced that people take so many drugs because it is their escape from overwhelming hardships. A stable and appropriate society doesn’t have these types of drug problems. The problem isn’t with the users, it is with our society/government/economy or a combination of all of them. The “users” are just people reacting as people do to the conditions that they are facing. It isn’t a “failure” of some sort, it is just who we are as people. We have created situations that result in these problems. People react to those situations in very predictable ways, including turning to the use of drugs. The magnitude of this problem is a relatively new situation, one that might have a workable solution if we really take the time and effort, and investment, to solve it.

I am not saying that I know of a solution, I am just pointing out that the problem of immigration isn’t with the immigrants. We need, and should embrace, a “healthy” amount of immigration (whatever that means). The current magnitude of the “problem” exists because we contribute to the creation of the forces that compel people to take such outlandish risks. The solution lies at home (our home – as well as theirs). The advantage of it largely being our problem is that if we can find a workable solution at home, that solution will also be the solution to many of our internal problems. We are faced with the apparently insurmountable drug problem at the same time as we face other apparently insurmountable problems such as global warming and saber rattling by many countries around the globe. The hopeful part is that it seems like the solutions to all of these problems are likely to be the same. It isn’t by use continually stomping out a lot of different fires, it is more like getting one large fire under control. Good luck to us in figuring out what that fire might be, and how to get it under control.

Fixing our economic and social problems at home will go a long way toward resolving the immigration problem by reducing the pressure to escape conditions in the countries of origin – but it will not solve the entire problem. The larger solution will require bolstering the economies of those countries so that we have all benefit from a more prosperous and stable shared (rather than exploited) global economy. That also means working with ourselves to change long standing approaches of economic exploitation of third world (or emerging) economies. Our corporations and government need to work with these countries for the benefit of all, not just the benefit of those that have to power to control.

Now that I am starting to get over the shock of my wife suddenly acquiring an incurable brain cancer that took her life in less than three months, I am beginning a process that feels a bit like the resurrection of the phoenix. I realize that my insignificant life is not comparable to great myths such as the Phoenix, but as those of you who have experienced an event such as this know, there are many similarities. My wife and I had been married for 48 years, being together for over 50. We had finally worked out most of the “marriage bugs” and were looking forward to a couple of decades more when she took ill and was swept away from me.

Her passing was much more than the loss of a friend, a partner, or lover – it was the loss of my identity as well. We had been together so long that we had grown into one – just as many tree trunks do when the contact each other for long enough, they grow together and are no longer two trees living side-by-side, they become one. In some very real and important ways I am no longer the person who I was just a few months ago, that person ceased to exist the moment that she died. Whoever that “Charlie” was in longer.

So, my new task it is rise once again – to create a new “Charlie.” However, I am not interested in creating a “new me” based upon any sort of “plans” or notion of what I want to be. I am more interested in leaving options open, and opening myself to experiences that might be useful for shaping something new and interesting (and who knows, maybe “important” in some way). My promise to my wife on her death bed was that I would continue the good fight to help the world, and that I would do it in a way that brought joy to myself and others. I am searching for ways toward that goal.

One of the things that I have done is to rent a second house not far from here that I can spend part-time in without the ties and constraints that are associated with our home for the last 30 years. I want to force myself to meet new people, experience a new environment and watch to see what grows. Our home in the country is very nice, quite beautiful … and very isolated. It is easy to spend days without seeing or talking to anyone, seeing and talking to others requires action and time. My new experimental living situation is located in a pretty, old fashioned “tourist” town. Stepping out of the door always results in encounters with others – it is a bit of the opposite from my current home. However, I am not particularity interested in encountering the tourists because they are into their “vacation thing”, I am interested in getting to know some of the locals on a more personal level. I picked on this town because it is where I grew up, leaving shortly after graduating from high school (notice I said “graduated from high school” not “graduated high school” – a hint of my old age I suppose). I am curious if something will grow from those old ties and old memories. It is an experiment at this point.

Almost 20 years ago my wife and I purchased a camper that slides into the bed of a pickup to do a bit of travel. We used it a few times, but mostly it just sat in the back yard beckoning us to take some time and travel. An indication of our use is that my 2006 Chevrolet pickup has 60,000 miles on it. Finally we aged out of the camper when my wife could no longer get into the bed over the pickup cab, and had a hard time negotiating the steps to get inside. We were contemplating selling the camper and purchasing a camper van with the intent of traveling around the USA when she died. My instinct when she died was to sell my camper, but then realized that while she couldn’t use the camper, I still can.

A overwhelming reaction when my wife died was get me away from HERE. Get me out of this place, get me away from all of the “house ghosts” (cloths in the closest, tooth brush in the bathroom, pots and pans and dishes, knickknacks on the shelves … everything around me). That has settled down a bit, I am comfortable living with these ghosts (but haven’t had the courage to change or move anything yet). Now I find myself in a place that was good with two people sharing each other’s time and interests – but now feels empty and lonely. Most of my future visions, plans and goals were related to OUR visions, our plans and goals, our interests. That no longer applies.

I began to wonder if perhaps I should continue with the plan to tour the county using the pickup and camper. A “Travels of Charlie” rather than “Travels with Charley” sort of adventure in the spirit of John Steinbeck. I don’t expect a written result from the trip (I have no intention of writing a book), but perhaps the experiences of an extended solo journey into unknown lands might be similar. I have been doing a bit of reading in preparation of this adventure. Of course I had to read Travels with Charley. I then stumbled upon the book Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon that is another narrative of a long solo journey around the USA. The two stories have a lot of similarities, and many differences besides that they were on different routes. The personal experiences were quite different, but both life changing. These trips were not particularly dangerous, but certainly allowing for a lot of time in introspection and contemplation. My daughter gave me yet another travel book as a Christmas present called On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux. Theroux was vastly more adventuresome, and more dangerous, by taking a solo drive through rural Mexico during the Trump Presidency.

Each of the trips chronicled in these three books were the result of personal crises driving the authors in search of something, something that was known and unknowable at the beginning. These three books have caused me to wonder about the purpose of my proposed trip. I think this might be important because it might change some key aspects of the logistics of the trip. For example, if it is a “sight seeing” trip taking me to the various wonders of the country, I better be making plans and reservations now because most of these “hot spots” are booked far in advance. It is no longer feasible to just show up at a national park and expect a camping spot, and the hotels/motels are also booked and unavailable. It would be a planned trip with an itinerary and schedules. If it is a trip to parks to see the natural wonders, then perhaps my camper will suffice – but it will probably mean often cooking and eating by myself at a picnic table in a forest somewhere. (My experience is that I don’t like to do that very much, so I find places where I can purchase a meal.) A solution to the lonely part would be to take another person. A nice lady friend has already come forth to let me know she would really like to join me. Of course, that will totally change the nature of the trip.

If I am not particularly interested in seeing the wonders of nature, then perhaps the entire camping aspect is not necessary. Maybe a car trip with stays at hotels and motels would be better. A car would certainly be less expensive to drive, and easier to get around. However renting rooms and eating in restaurants would be MUCH more expensive than staying in parks and cooking in the camper. Perhaps I can’t afford to make it a car trip, or perhaps that limits the available time too much. However, at this point I am not willing to select based upon price, but rather based upon intent.

My intent is no longer just to “get the hell out of here” – but something more, something related to forming a new me. I don’t want to just get away, nor do I want to just go see pretty and interesting sights, I want to explore and grow. But explore and grow what, and for what reason? Is it just a desire to taste tastier things, or have more “adventuresome” adventures? Am I looking for eye candy and stokes to my ego, perhaps even someone to hug and cuddle now and then? Could be, but I don’t think so. I think it is more along the lines of my promise to my dying wife (and myself) that I will continue to do good things and have fun. (Having fun not in the sense of immediate pleasure like a carnival ride or an amazing dinner, but fun in the sense of enjoying life knowing that I am working toward making the world a better place in my little, inconsequential, way. This kind of fun is more like a satisfaction of life rather than a short term titillation.)

It feels like I need to go “out there” and find out things from people. I feel compelled to find out who they are, what they think, what is important to them – how do they visualize the world? I could do that by going to parks and special places, talking to those that are doing the same. However, that would result in me talking to travelers, vacationers, those with the time and means to do so. That does not connect me to the local communities. I would find something about the world view of tourists, but perhaps miss the big part. The important part. Right now, as I sit here today, I am really curious about what the others think, their world view, their worries and proposed solutions. The country seems very divided these days, but I don’t believe it. I think we are just not listening to each others – we aren’t hearing. I want to go listen.

To do this listening I need to find a way to find people to listen to. I think that is not in the parks, I think that is in diners, bars, shopping centers, sidewalks, tiny little museums, odd little local “special places.” Those are best found on foot in communities. It means getting out of the car and walking around where people might be. It probably means staying in some pretty seedy places, and maybe some pretty expensive ones. Maybe it means sleeping out on a cot or in a sleeping bag once in awhile – but then finding meals where people go to eat.

I spoke to some of my Buddhist friends this morning about this goal and worried that it would be my finding a lot of things, but not sharing them – so what would be the point, it would just me once again filling myself up with nothing. Their response was that I am a social person, a talker and that while I might not write a book or a paper on the subjects, I WILL talk to many people about what I found. Not only that, but they are already excited to hear what it is that I find out there. Maybe that enough.

As I write this I realize that I am going toward car travel rather than camper travel, going toward staying in towns rather than parks, and going solo rather than with a partner. Theroux purchased an obviously “used” car for his excursion to avoid standing out – maybe I should too. However, I think my older Subaru is probably just fine for the States – maybe not for deep Mexico.

While sitting in my hot tub this morning watching the sun brightening the dawn hours I seem to have slipped a bit down that old rabbit hole. I don’t think there is any value in what I found down that little hole, but I am going to write about it just so I don’t totally forget the thoughts.

I was contemplating the fact that our eyes are sensitive enough to register a single photon of light, which I think is is pretty amazing. I noticed that as the sky brightened, the stars all disappeared except for a couple of exceptionally bright ones that I could spot, but then lose again if I moved my eye. After a few minutes those disappeared too, sort of. The “sort of” part was that I could still catch glimpses of stars far from the center of my field of view, off to the sides. When I shifted my eyes to ‘look’ at them, I could no longer see them. This because of the different sensitivities between the rods and cones in the eye. Rods do good with dim black and white, cones are better at brighter colors.

Among these observations I found the rabbit hole. I drifted off into wondering what a single photon is and realized that it isn’t a particle of any sort, rather it is a single wave. Of course then the next question was “what is waving?” And the obvious answer is that the universe is waving. The universe is a four dimensional (or more) shape in what we call space-time (ST). The space time is filled with fields, at least gravity and electromagnetic fields, very likely many more. The single photon is a wave in the electromagnetic field. Simple, no problem with this.

However, Einstein postulated that the speed of light is a constant from every point of view. That is a really odd thing, if we are moving within the universe, moving relative to the ST axis, then if a photon is a wave on the field its speed should vary depending upon the motion of the observer. This is the “mind twist” the sits in the middle of general relativity. The rat hole that I fell into this morning is that means that nothing (no thing) moves relative to ST. If we (the observers here in our hot tub in the back yard) aren’t moving relative to the fields that are somehow “pinned” to ST, then of course the speed of light is a constant for everything because nothing is moving relative to any other “things” from the vantage point of ST. It is all stationary – sort of.

This “sort of” is slightly different because ST is expanding, it is getting bigger but not in the sense of getting bigger dimensionally, it is getting bigger timely (actually space-timely). In 1931 an astronomer named Edmin Hubble proposed that the frequency (and wavelength) of light changes as it travels through space. The further it travels, the longer the wavelength becomes – providing a nice measure of distance if you happen to know the wavelength of light at its source. Handily, we have a few standards that might fit this criteria (assuming things work the same everywhere). The hydrogen alpha line is an example of one. We know the frequency/wavelength up close, and we assume that it would be the same “up close” at a distant location. Because there is so much hydrogen in the universe it is bright and readily identifiable. What astronomers noticed was that this easily identifiable feature shows up at different wavelengths depending upon how far the source is from us. The further the source is, the longer (redder) the wavelength is – giving a nice measuring stick for distance.

My rabbit hole adventure revolved around the realization that the reason that the wavelength gets longer is that the wave has been waving for a longer time, and that while the wave was racing across the electromagnetic field that is “pinned” to ST space got bigger and therefore the wavelet got longer. It is because the universe had been expanding everywhere while the wave was making its “speed of light” traverse to our eye (or telescope).

That seems obvious, and perhaps was way back when I was struggling through my physics major – but this morning it suddenly because intuitively obvious, not just logically obvious. But that still leaves a little problem of nothing (no thing) moving with respect to ST (and therefore the electromagnetic field pinned to the universal ST). Light doesn’t “travel” – there is no thing traveling. Light waves across (or through) the field that is stationary in ST. Since we, and everything else, is stationary (in some dimension other than our normal 3-dimensional point of view) the speed of that wavelet is always the same for everything.

All of this seems to make sense – but it leaves a little nagging question behind; “How can everything be stationary when things clearly move about?” From what point of view, in what kind of multidimensional universe, can it appear that things are moving when in the reality they are not? What is moving if it is not the “things”? While this sounds like a crazy question (and perhaps it is), it doesn’t sound any crazier than to say that the speed of light is a constant that does not change due to the relative motions of the source and receiver. THAT makes zero sense to me in exactly the same way that the idea that no things move relative to the universe and hence relative to each others.

So there is my rabbit hole. The speed of light being constant and all of the weird things described in Special and General Relativity make perfect sense if the universe is stationary but expanding.